Objectivity in archaeology

[BAJR Host]

Borrowing Gorilla's post from the ICE contract section..

quote:SUBJECTIVE: Influenced by or based on personal belief or feelings, rather than based on facts.
OBJECTIVE: Not influenced by personal beliefs or feelings; based on real facts. It's an admirably objective and impartial report. Science is usually concerned only with objective facts that can be proved or disproved.
The difference between these two important ideas is the difference between fact and opinion. Facts are objective and probably true; however, if no clear facts exist about a topic, then a series of balanced opinions needs to be produced to allow the reader to make up his or her mind; opinions are subjective ideas held by individuals and so are always biased. If unbalanced opinions are presented as if they are facts, they act as propaganda or persuasion, e.g. a BAJR headline might state: "Unit of 1 is the prime cause of trouble in this area". This is presented as an objective fact but is clearly a subjective opinion.

An objective piece of information, therefore, needs either to be the whole truth and at least be unbiased or balanced, whereas a subjective point of view is biased because it is either not the complete picture or it is merely a viewpoint or expression of feelings.

I cadged this bit from some old course notes about fingerprinting and expert witnesses, but it is just as workable with archaeology...

In the legal arena, expert witness testimony is presented as opinion testimony, not because the conclusion is someone's personal opinion, but because it is a conclusion that the lay person is incapable of forming. The conclusion reached by the examiner is an “interpretation or conclusion by trained individuals after conducting an examination employing scientific principles, — that are reproducible.” Regardless of the scientific or technical discipline, the purpose of the expert witness in the legal system is to interpret information and form a conclusion that a jury of lay persons would be incapable of doing. If a person without any training in the area of identification would provide an opinion as to an identification, that opinion would be subjective and based on personal feelings, rather than skill, and would sound something like “it looks the same to me.” An examiner's conclusion is not based upon a personal opinion, but rather on an evaluation of the detail present using knowledge and skills acquired through training, education, and experience.
If defining the term 'expert witness' - Training, education, and experience are the tangible assets that form the foundation of an examiner's expertise and are not created in the examiner's mind. An examiner's knowledge and ability can be and is tested, is documented and can be verified, and is evaluated by the courts and juries every time the examiner takes the witness stand. One of the cornerstone principles of scientific evidence and its examination is that it is not influenced by the mood, emotions, or the personal prejudices of the examiner. Subjectiveness is based solely on personal feelings.

So... after all these years of being an experienced, trained, educated and peer-reviewed archaeologist...

I say Acheulian, you say Mousterrian,
I say pot-lid, natural fractured flint, you say rough-out, incomplete scraper,
I say Romano-Saxon, you say "no such thing!"
I say potato, you say potatoe.

... which one of us is right? We both are, of course

Can we be truely objective? can a person who deeply loves the victorian period be any less worthy than a person who says.. nay... the victorian is not as important as the medieval... who is then told we will scrape off the medieval to get to the far more important Roman - etc... each arguing the case for retention / or / removal how many Roman Forts = one Paleolithic hunters site? If you could recreate the paleolithic life of the UK - but had to remove a roman fort to do it (say vindolanda) would you?

How can we be objective?

"I don't have an archaeological imagination.."
Borekickers

[drpeterwardle]

I would suggest

"Pragmatic archaeology theory in Crisis" BAR is essiential reading for this thread.

David asked the questions:

Q. Is Thornborough a Henge Complex or not...ANs Clearly Yes
Q. what is it's importance...Ans National Importance - Rarity

Simple.

The real question is in fact if the landscape is being destroyed in any event would it be better to excavate it now or to leave it to slow decay.

This is a more complex question.

An example of subjectivity given was:

"X is the prime cause of trouble in this area". This is presented as an objective fact but is clearly a subjective opinion.

This could be either subjective or objective.

The objective view who be based upon evidence, some of which would be quantifiable, however we would of course have to define what trouble actually was ......

Dr Peter Wardle

[1man1desk]

Posted by Gorrilla:

quote:Science is usually concerned only with objective facts that can be proved or disproved ... If unbalanced opinions are presented as if they are facts, they act as propaganda or persuasion, e.g. a BAJR headline might state: "Unit of 1 is the prime cause of trouble in this area". This is presented as an objective fact but is clearly a subjective opinion

Actually, I think science is concerned with hypotheses, which can be tested through trying to disprove them by examination of established facts. It is probably fair to define 'objectivity' as an unbiased approach to any question that can be addressed through the scientific method.

So, for instance, if you can arrive at a definition of the term 'prime cause of all the trouble' in terms of a certain pattern of behaviour, you could use the scientific method to objectively test whether any individual (lets say Unit of 1, selected at random for illustrative purposes) is the prime cause of all the trouble. You would try to disprove the hypothesis by provoking the individual into the defined pattern of behaviour, and seeing if he didn't respond!

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[BAJR Host]

of course any provoking would earn a slap round the 'ead

I think Peter has put into words what the problem may be...

fact = this is important from this period
fact = this is a rarity
fact = it is in the way of development so you can say it is arare all you want, just how to get rid of it!

"I don't have an archaeological imagination.."
Borekickers

[gorilla]

Hmmm... it would appear that I have set the metaphorical pigeon amongst the metaphysical cats.

Firstly, I'm paradigmatically challenged... just never sure which side of the processualist / post-processualist schools I sit in(probably why I didn't do that well on theoretical archaeology classes). Similarly, the 'everything is ritual' thing... sorry, my brain is not just wired that way. I leave all that theory stuff to proper theorists. TAG just leaves me confused (sorry to all you TAGist people).

Anyway, for what its worth, I don't think it possible to be truly objective (in archaeology or anything else for that matter). Nor, do I think that anyone can be wholly subjective (nasty little facts can get in the way of a good story / lie). Personally, I think there are three sides to every story... yours, mine and the truth.

Objectivity is a virtue all in itself, something that Buddhists fight to attain and businessmen pretend to have. Simply using the same method of thinking as most of the Western world doesn't at all confer objectivity. It's just thinking, which is a process (as opposed to consciousness, which is a state of being). People more often than not slant their thinking to conform to some imagined or wished-for reality. Everyone who's ever heard an excuse or confronted an bigot (archaeological or otherwise) knows that. Furthermore, modern science kind of choked itself when it discovered (to its complete and total dismay) that there cannot (logically) ever be such thing as an objective observer. A person watching an experiment, even if they are in a different room and touches nothing--he/she still affects the experiment...just by watching.

Yet, I believe in consensus. Scientific consensus is the collective judgement, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of science at a particular time. Scientific consensus is not, by itself, a scientific argument, and is not part of the scientific method; however, the content of the consensus may itself be based on both scientific arguments and the scientific method (thank you Wikipedia) It is different to, and should not be confused with, objectivity... scientist may agree at one point in time but later discover that this consensus represented a subjective point of view.

... and, with that in mind, I think that most BAJRites agree that Uof1's postings are a bit weird.

[Unitof1]

As far as I can see, things can only be subjective if there is a god, which is good, as it means that I am right even when I am wrong.

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

Blimey Unit I didn't know you was a relgious person-I raise my hat to you!
I think archaeology is both-first people record the phsycal evidence on site (objective) and then try to interprate why it's there (which is subjective),and that's where the fun starts (and the arguements and tantrums).:face-stir:

[trowelmonkey]

Objective recording? that'll never catch on!

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

You are quite correct!-what on earth was I thinking of when I suggested that archaeologists only record the "physical evidence" BEFORE interpretation!:face-stir:

[trowelmonkey]

You mean "This is medium greyish brown silty clay with frequent ritually deposited struck flints primary fill of rubbish pit" vs "No you fool, 'tis mid brownish grey loam with moderate small pot-poilers of Romano-British cooking pit?" Not much further from seeing dead people, and that's never a good sign....